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Bryan Forbes interview

In January 2012 director, actor and screenwriter Bryan Forbes became the latest recipient of the BFI’s highest honour, the Fellowship. Unable to accept the award in person, he was interviewed at his home by actor Simon Callow about his remarkable career, which has included Whistle Down the Wind (1961), The L-Shaped Room (1962) and Séance on a Wet Afternoon (1964). Forbes discusses his early career as an actor (his interpretation of Shakespeare’s Shylock was cited as being the greatest of his generation) and his works as a director, often radically different in style to the British New Wave films from the early 1960s. Callow questions Forbes about his renowned ease with actors, and asks about one of the director’s projects which failed to come to fruition - a film about the lives of Napoleon and Josephine.